the Humanist view

The Constitutional Court’s central-logic and premise for upholding the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 includes:

“The uniqueness of Uganda’s Constitution which obliges the courts of law to take into account the country’s socio-cultural norms, values and aspirations when resolving any dispute before them.

The Anti-Homosexuality Act being, in general, a reflection of the social-cultural realities of the Ugandan society, and was passed by an overwhelming majority of the democratically elected representatives of the Ugandan citizens.”

So, let us fact check “reflection of the social-cultural realities” of Uganda in the Justices’ decision to uphold the AHA 2023. What are the realities in Uganda today of sex-related crimes?

Deducing from their previous pronouncements, including in a “February 2021 report on the sectoral committee on legal affairs on the sexual offences bill 2019,” a majority of members of parliament hold a narrow view of sexuality.

To most members of parliament and seemingly a majority of Ugandans, there is only one acceptable way to engage in a sexual relationship. “Only the peno-vaginal sexual intercourse is natural. All other forms of canal intercourse, such as anal or oral are unnatural … are against the order of nature.”

On the basis of their narrow view of sexuality, Uganda members of parliament find unacceptable ‘the penetration of another person’s anus with other person’s sexual organ or with any object.” And,therefore, they prescribe “a ban on a sexual act between persons of the same gender.”

The Uganda Police Force, within its “Annual Crime Report” categorises unacceptable sexual relationships’ as “Unnatural Offences,” and under “Other Sex-Related Offences.” Note that ‘unnatural offences may include: sodomy, buccal coitus (oral sex – the ‘sin of Gomorrah’), lesbianism or tribadism and bestiality (sex between a human and an animal).

According to the most recent Police crime report, of 2023:

• 14,846 sex-related offences were reported in 2023, only 1.1 percent (160) were unnatural.
• 14,693 sex-related offences were reported in 2022, only 0.6 percent (83) were unnatural.
• 16,373 sex-related offences were reported in 2021, only 0.5 percent (80) were unnatural.
• 16,144 sex-related offences were reported in 2020, only 0.5 percent (79) were unnatural.
• 15,638 sex-related offences were reported in 2019, only 0.7 percent (103) were unnatural.

Logic follows that if homosexuality is widely practiced in Uganda, as our members of parliament assert, those practicing it are doing so by consent; to the extent that they and those who know about it have no desire to report it as a crime to the Police.

Or is it the case that ‘victims of homosexuality’ haven’t been reporting the ‘crime of homosexuality’ to the Police because of insufficient legislation and therefore justifying AHA 2023?

It seems more likely that the prevailing social-cultural realities in Uganda today, as demonstrated by AHA 2023, is to demonise a lesser widely prevalent sex-related offence, while insufficiently decrying the more prevalent sex-related offences.

According to the Police crime report of 2023:

• 15,309 persons were victims of sex-related offences.
• 13,144 persons, 86 percent, who were victims of sex-related offences were defilement victims.
• 12,818 persons, the majority, 98 percent, of defilement victims were female juveniles.
• 1,566 persons were rape victims, of whom the majority, 89 percent, 1,395 were adult females and the remaining 11 percent, 171 were juvenile females.

Girls, in fact, are the largest victims of sex-related offences in Uganda and that are committed by heterosexual men, feasibly including male members of parliament. According to the Police crime report of 2023 categorisations of defilement victims, there are girls who were defiled by their guardians, by their parents and by their teachers.

Are the justices of the Constitutional Court of Uganda, by comparison, signalling that defilement of thousands of girls annually and by heterosexual men is the more tolerated “reflection of the social-cultural realities of Ugandan society?”

Is there another empirical data set the contradicts Police crime reports and which truly proves that there is an urgent and a necessary need to enact a law, AHA 2023, “to protect children in schools who were being recruited into homosexuality practices?”

It would appear there isn’t empirical data to support the enactment of AHA 2023, but rather it was enacted and upheld by the Constitutional Court on the basis of myths.